Meet Natalie Wood's Granddaughter, Who's Named After One of Her Most Famous Roles (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

WhenNatalie Wood’s granddaughter, Clover, began seventh grade this year, she told her teacher her first name. “Oh,” he said of her unique name, “You’ve probably never heard of this movie, but it’s calledInside Daisy Clover."

“I didn’t know what to say,” Clover later told her mom,Natasha Gregson Wagner, “so I didn’t say anything.” So Natasha told her, “Well, you can go up to him privately and tell him that’s your grandma.”

Clover, the 12-year-old daughter of Natasha and her husband, actor Barry Watson, is indeed named after her grandmother’s character in the 1965 filmInside Daisy Clover, starring Wood opposite a then-relatively unknown actor,Robert Redford.

Natasha recently brought Clover to the Warner Brothers Archives in Burbank to learn more about “Grandma Natalie” and to see — and touch — some of the her film costumes as part of a new TCM Original series,The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of,airing Nov. 1 in the 10 p.m. hour. Natasha’s segment is the first in the new series.

Natalie Wood with daughter Natasha in 1970.Screen Archives/Getty

Screen Archives/Getty

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Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood in “Splendor in the Grass” (1961).Silver Screen Collection/Getty

Silver Screen Collection/Getty

But in 2016, Natasha, the daughter of Wood and her second husband, British producer Richard Gregson, began sharing her memories more publicly, with the launch of thefragrance line, Natalie, followed in 2020 with a documentaryWhat Remains Behind,and amemoirMore Than Love: An Intimate Portrait of My Mother, Natalie Wood.

“It’s been the best thing I could have done, even though it was the scariest thing I could have done,” Natasha, who was 11 when her mom died, tells PEOPLE. “Because I think the thing that held me back so much was that grief is so private, and her death was so public. And so I felt like I had to stay small and invisible — and private. But that was not good for my mental health.”

Natalie Wood for ‘West Side Story’ (1961).Silver Screen Collection/Getty

Sharing her memories, she says, has made her feel “safer and stronger.” As Natasha explains, “I have more of a mission because it’s not just about having a famous mom, it’s also about survival of grief and what that looks like. And I have a bit of a story to tell around it because I am not a victim of it. I’ve gotten through it.”

“I feel this real responsibility to share her,” she continues, “and I just want to help Clover understand who she was too.”

Meanwhile her daughter has become more curious about her famous grandmother. “I think of it like beads on a string,” she says. “It’s like a necklace she’s putting together, and that archive visit was one of the beads on the string of knowing her grandma, until one day she will have this complete necklace and she’ll know who she was.”

In turn, she wonders if her daughter also has a bit of “Grandma Natalie” herself.

“Clover has a real sense of herself and a real value of herself,” she says. “My mom always fought for her worth in the business that she was in. Maybe Clover has that and my mom is making sure that goes forward in her granddaughter.”

source: people.com